Going Viral on YouTube with Jamie Salvatori

In This Episode

• [02:19] – Jamie explains why he created a separate channel for YouTube Shorts content from the original Vat19 channel. He also shares how his team decides which content to post on their main channel and Vat19 shorts channel.
• [06:59] – Can you game the algorithms in YouTube Shorts?
• [11:35] – Jamie talks about the number of series, popular content on their main channel, and some shows that didn’t work out for them.
• [20:25] – What are their criteria for choosing who to cast in their videos?
• [22:11] – Jamie recalls the parodies they made where one of their contents was featured in ESPN. He also explains his view on collaborations.
• [29:16] – Stephan shares his idea on a Stranger Things x Thunderbirds parody. He also shares what Parkinson’s Law is.
• [34:05] – Jamie differentiates stitch and duet. He explains how reaction video content performs on TikTok and how to make it more engaging.
• [42:55] – Stephan asks Jamie lightning round questions about YouTube Shorts, product placements, and a collaboration with an eCommerce company.
• [45:39] – Visit vat19.com for fun and strange stuff, toys, giant candies, gadgets, and more.

Jump to Links and Resources

Jamie, it’s so great to have you back.

It’s great to be here. I hope to live up to that wonderful intro. I hope I have new wisdom for you, but we’ll see.

We’ll make it up. I know you’re big into YouTube Shorts now. You have a whole channel with how many hundreds of Shorts on them. Some of them have millions of views. There’s one with a pooping flamingo that I have to admit I’ve watched at least a few dozen times.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

First of all, why a separate channel? Why not put it on Vat19’s normal channel?

That’s a great question. Shorts has been evolving. If I were to start creating short content today, I would like to know if I would separate it into its own channel. We weren’t sure what this TikTok clone would be like and how YouTube would handle the content versus long-form content, so we thought the best thing was just, “hey, let’s just put this content over here and see what’s going to happen.”

Part of the reason we did that, honestly, is I saw MrBeast do the same thing. So I thought, “hey, that guy’s brilliant when it comes to YouTube. So if that’s what he’s doing, it makes sense.” 

We started doing that, and then I read something from him a few months later. He was like, “I don’t know, I just felt like putting it on somewhere separate. There was no great insight.”

I flipped a coin. Somebody dared me to put it on a separate channel.

Yeah. We were heavy on TikTok before we made the YouTube Shorts channel. We typically put two pieces of long-form content weekly on our main channel. Simultaneously, we’re putting out fourteen TikToks a week, twice a day, seven days a week. So we thought, “If YouTube were to notify our fans twice a day that we’ve got a new video Shorts, that might overwhelm that audience if they had subscribed to us for long-form content originally.”

Constraints are really good from a creative standpoint when you're trying to produce quality content. Creativity excels when you face situations that seem to hinder your plan – especially when creating content. Share on X

That was another part of the equation, but today, we’re posting about one Shorts weekly to our main channel and then twice a day to our Shorts channel. That could change over time. I could see when YouTube wanted us to post everything on the same channel.

Interestingly, you’re splitting your publishing of Shorts onto two different channels. You’re not just posting only Shorts to your YouTube Shorts channel for the Vat19 Shorts channel. What’s the decision process around this? Is it like, “oh, that one deserves to go on the main channel. That one, we need more reach, so it goes on the main channel, or this one is the third of the week, so that’s where it goes?” How does that work?

Our creative director would probably love me to have an answer to that question, but it’s what you suggested. “Hey, this one may belong on our main channel.” But because we’re creating so much short-form content, you will have some that you feel turned out better than others. That’s part of it.

The other part is, “Hey, this is one that we’ve identified early on that we think is a cool idea. We’re writing a script and putting a little more time and effort into its production. So let’s put it on the main channel.”

As far as reach is concerned, what I love about Shorts, TikTok, and Reels is that the ability to go viral seems like it’s back again. That, I felt like, had been lost for many, many years on YouTube. Even with a fairly large audience on our main channel on YouTube, with 8.5 million subscribers, we very rarely could get a video to take off and expand beyond our audience and reach 50 million views, whereas that was possible ten years ago on YouTube. 

If a piece of content hits a threshold, these algorithms expand the reach and will continue if those metrics stay high.

Now, I can only find that phenomenon on Shorts or TikTok, where anybody can put up something, and if the algorithm latches onto it, you get 12 million views in a weekend for a Short. To me, that is invigorating again. That’s exciting and fun, and that’s the promise of YouTube in the first place. That’s why I’m so excited about it.

Can you game these algorithms, or are you just finding that you must keep throwing mud against the wall and eventually, something sticks? What’s the secret sauce to this, or have you not figured that out yet?

I haven’t figured that out yet. YouTube will tell you publicly that they are trying to deliver satisfaction to individual users, so your experience on the platform is personalized to you. What signals they use to determine satisfaction, we don’t know. We have some ideas. YouTube will tell you that engagement—people commenting, liking, and sharing a piece of content—helps and that having someone watch a lot of the video so that the retention rate is high. If people watch over 100% of your Short, meaning they let it loop, is a signal. 

But when you look at that analytics data as a creator, you can find pieces of content that seem to have similar metrics to what I explained, but one will have 10 million views, and the other one will have 100,000. So there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. If a piece of content hits a threshold, these algorithms expand the reach and will continue if those metrics stay high.

You can create a piece of content that works well for a group this size, but it might not work as well for a big group. So we know what we’re aiming for, but how to do that consistently for a mass market is impossible because you’re creating entertainment. Hollywood makes a few hundred movies a year—maybe 300 or 400 movies a year—and you’ll never hear about most of them. You’ll never know what they were because so many fail.

They’ve got the best writers, directors, producers, talent, and everything. They’re the best. They can get anybody they want and still screw it up. I think it’s a bit of the throwing mud against a wall. You have to keep trying things not only to find something that works but to prevent yourself from finding one thing that works, repeating that over and over, it stops working, and then you have nothing else to fall back on. At least, my opinion of trying to make content on the Internet since 2006 is that you cannot rely on one thing.

When did you start posting videos to YouTube?

Our Vat19 main channel’s first video was in February of 2007.

Amazing. If only you had bought Bitcoin.

Yeah. If I had any money then, I would have liked to have bought Apple stock. Of course, any number of stocks would have been nice, Bitcoin if it was around back then.

It wasn’t until 2009. I’m just poking fun. If you could wind back the clock knowing what I know now and I have a time machine—I’m going to go back in time to 2007—these are the strategies I’m going to implement. These are the series, parodies, Shorts, and everything I’m going to put out over the next 15 years. What would be the things that you’d say, “for sure, I’m going to double, triple, or quadruple down on these. I’m going to toss these other ones out the window.” 

We put out a lot of different series and are always trying new ones to see what would work.

I know you have all these different kinds of food, and you’re looking at products you’re never going to carry and making fun of them. Those are funny. Then, there are ones where you’re hunting down one of your employees hiding somewhere in a bunch of boxes. 

I had no idea of the extent of the silliness that goes on beyond the product videos until I was prepping for this interview. Then, I was like, “wow, I can totally binge-watch a bunch of this stuff. It’s really funny.” Tell us more about that.

I appreciate that you enjoy some of our content. We put out a lot of different series and are always trying new ones to see what would work. Something that we tried recently was, “hey, let’s quadruple down on some popular content.” So we dove into our YouTube Analytics and saw, “wow, there’s a series here called Break It To Make It,” where we take items that we sell, pair them with a generic household item, and try to break the first with the household item. Usually, the pairings wouldn’t lend themselves to breaking the thing, and it’s a lot of fun.

We’re putting that out once a month or something like that. We noticed in our analytics that it was driving a huge percentage of our views and new subscribers, so we said, “Okay, the obvious thing here is we should be doing this once a week.” So we started putting it out once a week. It worked well for a couple of months, and the audience said, “Okay, enough.”

We trained our audience over the year that we’re all over the place to an extent. That was a good lesson to learn.

They stopped having the effect they had, views started going down, and comments were becoming a little negative. Like, “hey, stop it with the breaking show. When are you going to do this thing? When are you going to do that thing?” So we trained our audience over the year that we’re all over the place to an extent.

That was a good lesson to learn. It is difficult to do so many different things from a production standpoint. It’s a little bit easier when you can turn your production facility into a factory, and we’re just going to churn out these shows. 

To answer your question, what would I change if I returned to 2007? I don’t know if the shows we’re making now would even work 15 years ago. I don’t think they would. We’ve been really lucky and still fairly relevant. Kids still come on the tours, and they’re still watching our content. I was a kid when I started making this stuff. I was in my early 20s when I got on YouTube. I’m 40-something now, I got four kids, and I’ve got a 15-year-old that’s driving now or learning to drive.

We’re on TikTok; we got 2.5 million followers there. People are watching our stuff. I’m really lucky, so that I wouldn’t change much. I’ve made many stupid mistakes in running this company for 15–20 years. That’s probably a good thing because I feel like there can’t be that many more mistakes for me to make. Maybe I’ve done them all at this point, and now I’m good to go. We’ll see.

What’s your favorite out of all these different series? First, you got the Break It To Make It, Let’s Play, and the other things. Then, you have the find the employee hiding. I need to remember what that one’s called.

We have Hidden in Plain Sight, where an employee tries to hide from me all day, and I try to find them and put them back to work. That one’s a lot of fun. That’s a favorite. Break It To Make It is a favorite; that’s fun. That’s our game show, our version of Jeopardy! if you will. We keep making episodes of that.

We have this other series called This Could Be Awesome, where we typically tackle a week-long challenge. For instance, we did one fairly recently where I covered my Tesla in gummy bears. I glued 100,000 gummy bears onto my Tesla. This cool design made it look like a candy race car. 

Those types of videos are my favorite because they’re so difficult to pull off. They usually start with a pretty fantastical idea like the Tesla thing. They tend to have a pretty big impact, but you don’t know how it’s going to end up doing it myself. We don’t know, like, “is this even going to work?” 

Another episode of that series that was a ton of fun was when we made a 2000-pound bath bomb and pushed it into my pool. So that’s another example of, “look, we know the process of making a bath bomb this big, but what happens when you make it four feet in diameter? Will it hold its shape, or will it just crumble under its weight? What’s going to happen?”

We don’t know the answer; the audience either. This thing could end up being a total failure. “Is it even going to work?” But, when it does work, there’s much gratification.

That might be my favorite series, although it’s the hardest to do. They were the most expensive. We’ve shot more of those than I care to admit where we got halfway through, we just had to stop and throw away all the footage. That’s very depressing, probably making the ones that do work even more gratifying.

Someone who does amazing science experiments on YouTube is Steve Spangler. Do you know Steve?

Yeah. I don’t know him personally, but I know of him.

He was a client for many, many years- for well over a decade. We helped him make a name for himself in terms of SEO and everything in the early days of 2003. That’s when we started working with him, pre-YouTube days.

One of his products we sold in our store. It was an early product, his Insta Snow Powder product. You add some water to it, and it instantly puffs up into the snow. I think we still sell that item. I love his stuff.

He sold Steve Spangler Science. He’s still speaking, has many TV appearances, his YouTube channels, and everything, but he’d be a great person to collaborate with and come up with all sorts of crazy experiments like the elephant toothpaste and all that sort of stuff.

Oh, yeah. That stuff is so good. We did a show, but it didn’t work. We have a lot of battle scars of shows or series that we tried to do that didn’t work. One of them was called Stupid Science, where we would do a stupid science experiment and then try to do something smart in contrast.

There were two hosts, me and another guy. The other guy was the stupid one, and I was supposed to be the smart one. The problem is I don’t know enough about science, so it never really worked. But then I had this other idea that I’d love to do with someone that knows something about science called Giant Science. We would do all sorts of cool science experiments, but I’m talking about the big stuff because that would bring kids in.

Mark Rober and MrBeast blew out a house with that elephant toothpaste. That type of stuff is just Giant Science. Kids would tune in for that. 

All I have is the name right now, but it’s catchy. Steve, if you’re out there watching, or Mark Rober, if you want to use the name, you got to come to me. We’ll talk about it. We’ll do it. We’ll make Giant Science. Or maybe MrBeast wants to do it because he’s friends with Mark Rober.

They might just be watching this.

I hope so.

I could always send you and Steve an intro. That’s another option.

That would be great. Yeah, Giant Science.

I like it. You’re in some of the videos but not in every video. What is the decision-making process around who is the talent in each of the different videos?

We have a lot of battle scars from shows or series that we tried to do that didn’t work.

It’s going to depend on the situation. When I first started, I had to be in every video because I was the only person. We only hire actors for our videos if we absolutely have to. The people that work at Vat19 are the ones that are in the videos. As the company has grown from basically just me to about 30–35 employees, we have many more people to choose from. They are oftentimes just much better talent than I am.

I have a few recurring roles. I must be the boss to search for the employee hiding from me. I play the announcer in Break It To Make It. But other than that, when they’re choosing who’s going to be in the videos, the directors decide who they think will be good.

I’ve noticed over the years that if they cast me in a video with scenes and lines, I’m usually the guy with the fewest number of lines. Acting isn’t my calling, so I don’t feature in many of the videos anymore. But we also make a conscious decision here in Vat19 to rotate people through the videos so that a show isn’t necessarily associated with one person or just a couple of people that work here because folks are going to move on over time. You don’t want the series to die because somebody has taken a new job.

It makes sense. Have you guys put out any parodies of things like reality shows?

We have.

Tell us more about that.

Our creative director here is a very funny guy. A couple of our writers here are trained, improv comedians. We got some funny folks, so parodies are up their alley. When Dude Perfect was at the height of their sort of ascent, they were still hugely popular, but when they came onto the scene and just got into the stratosphere, we made a little show called Dude Decent, where we redid trick shots. They all failed, but we would still celebrate really big like they did.

The celebrations were bigger than the tricks we were doing. It actually caught the attention of ESPN. They reached out and said, “can we put clips from your Dude Decent parody on SportsCenter tonight?” Along with other people here, I have actually been on SportsCenter, which is a huge highlight of mine. That was a really cool parody.

Why didn’t you include that in your bio that I read at the beginning?

I know. It has been on SportsCenter. I buried the lede. 

Another parody series that we’ve been doing recently, I wonder if you’re familiar with this guy. His name is Dhar Mann. He makes YouTube and TikTok videos. He’s very popular. 

The best way to describe them is if after-school specials were soap operas, really over-the-top acting. The dialogue is crazy, and very simple moral lessons hit you over the head with the lesson that’s trying to be taught. They’re very cheesy and cringy, but people love them. If you look at this YouTube channel, every video gets 5–10 million views. He’s huge on TikTok. The guy’s probably gotten 30 billion views across all social platforms. He has 20-million-plus subscribers or more everywhere. 

We’ve made a handful of parody videos. A highlight when we put out our first one was not only all the people that were super confused thinking it was an actual Dhar Mann video, but Dhar himself commented on our video, which is always huge when someone’s cool about it. I think he said something like, “not going to lie, that was pretty funny,” or whatever. That’s been a ton of fun.

Did you collaborate with any of these folks, like Dhar Mann or anybody else?

No, we haven’t. In my opinion, the age of collaborations is over as far as I’m concerned. Folks aren’t doing it as much. It’s harder to come by. People don’t want to do it, and they’re doing their own thing. They’re like, “look if I’m going to put something else into my content, I got to get paid for it.” And I don’t blame them.

The age of collaborations is over, as far as I’m concerned.

People aren’t doing collaborations as much as they used to, which I feel is kind of sad. We have our sights set next on MrBeast just because he’s the most popular YouTuber out there. We’re working on some parody content about MrBeast. Hopefully, that doesn’t backfire because I know he’s the most beloved creator on the platform. 

You got to punch up. We’ve only parodied folks that are crushing it, and they can take a little joke here or there.

But what about TV shows? There are some really great or at least infamous reality TV shows you could parody.

We’ve done little things in a commercial here or there that will make fun of that type of stuff, but it’s usually a quick joke here or there. We’ve done some quick jokes making fun of all of the home renovations shows that were so popular. But today, we’re really speaking to the TikTok generation, the short-form generation, and the YouTube generation. I don’t know how many TV shows they’re watching anymore. They watch a handful and Netflix streaming which makes it hard.

Let’s take streaming Netflix shows. One of the popular ones, I forget the name of it. Maybe Life After Death with Tyler Henry, The Hollywood medium. He’s this young guy that goes into Hollywood homes. He connects and gives the reading. It’s like, how could you possibly know that?

Google. That’s how he knows. That could be good. I feel that viewership is so fragmented now. As a culture, when there weren’t as many channels, everyone was watching the same stuff, but today, you got to wait for something like Stranger Things to come along, which is such a phenomenon for people to know what you’re talking about.

That was one. I was talking to our guys here, and they’re like, we can’t pull off a Stranger Things parody. It’d be way too expensive. It’d be cool, but we don’t have the budget or the money, which is true. We just got to pick our spots when it comes to parodies.

Couldn’t you run some contest where people could audition to be in this Stranger Things parody, and the total budget for this is $10,000 or something? It’s ridiculous how little money it is; somehow, they have to pull it off.

We’re speaking to the TikTok generation, the short-form generation, and the YouTube generation nowadays.

I like that. It’s a good idea. That could be fun. I’ll have to bring it back up to our creative director and see if we can find a creative way to do it. The thing we’re running into was with the sets because it is a period piece. How do we make our studio sets look like it’s happening in the ‘80s? That’s tricky.

Take this as an idea. I just grabbed this out of thin air. You know that old show, Thunderbirds, where the little characters were these little toy kinds of things from the ‘60s? Combine that with Stranger Things, so it’s Stranger Things meets Thunderbirds. All the sets are really tiny toys.

There we go. Set problem solved. I like that. Constraints are really good from a creative standpoint when you’re trying to do stuff. Having an unlimited budget, which I’ve never had the good fortune of having.

That should be a detriment. Do you know what Parkinson’s Law is?

I don’t.

The amount of time a project takes magically somehow fills the amount of time you give it. You give somebody a half hour to turn around this big project, and they’ll have something for you in a half hour. If you give them two weeks, they’ll take the full two weeks, and it won’t be that much better than if they had turned it around in a half hour.

One of the ideas that you could apply in your brainstorming processes is let’s make it ridiculously constrained.

You know what, there’s a common or popular filmmaking contest. I think it’s still around. It was popular when I was younger. It’s called the 24-Hour Film Race.

You show up on a Friday night, and they give you a topic, genre, name of a character, line of dialogue, and prop that has to be in your movie. You’re going to make a short movie that has to be between two and four minutes long. I don’t remember what all the constraints were.

They’re basically like, “okay, it’s Friday at 6 PM. Your video has to be submitted in 24 hours, that’s it, and then we’ll screen them all on Sunday.” It was great fun because we got 24 hours, that’s it. We’re just going to pull something together, and you’re picking stuff out of a hat.

“Oh, we’re going to do a silent film. How are we going to do that? We’re going to do it Western. How are we going to do that? We got 24 hours.” The stuff that people would do and could pull off was amazing.

Some of the greatest works of all time were created in a very short time. For example, have you ever read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho? 150 million copies were sold. Great book. Guess how long that story or book took to write?

I hope it’s not four hours.

No. Not quite that little, but it was 12 days, and 150 million copies were sold.

It’s pretty good. It’s not bad.

It’s a great book, by the way. If you want to read or listen to it on Audible, the Audible version is read by Jeremy Irons, the actor. Really, really good.

I love him.

Okay. Let’s talk a bit about reaction videos. Those are a thing on TikTok. What are you doing in it?

I hope we can come up with a good reaction concept. We haven’t been able to develop a good one—those platforms like it when you use their stitching and duet features. We don’t have the data to back it up, but we believe that content that features duets and stitches performs better than original content.

Finding fun ways to stitch, duet, or react to people’s content is a good way to do well on TikTok. I don’t know his name, but he’s that sarcastic, angry chef sitting on TikTok and reacting to people making stuff. Gordon Ramsay got really popular in TikTok doing the same thing, but this sarcastic chef is from New York. I think he’s maybe a little bit funnier than Gordon. We haven’t found a vehicle yet to do a consistent react series. Maybe one day we will.

Can we define stitch and duet for our listener who doesn’t know much about TikTok?

A stitch would be some of your content, some of their content, and then some more of your content. You’re just stitching in a piece of someone else’s content, and then you put that video up. Whereas in a duet, your content is seen side by side simultaneously.

As I’ve run my company for almost 20 years, I've made many stupid mistakes. That's probably a good thing because I feel like there can't be that many more mistakes for me to make. Share on X

There are different ways of doing that. You can have somebody on top who’s the original video you’re commenting about, and then your video is underneath it. Or you could have it in the background, and you’re pointing around different parts of the screen. I’ve seen some of those.

Yeah, the green screen.

What’s the best way to do this in the most engaging way?

It depends on the content that you’re dueting. It’s fun when sometimes you’ll see someone will duet someone else’s duet. Now, you end up with three videos playing simultaneously on and on, so you end up with a screen full of 8–10 people, all reacting to the same original piece of content.

I warn any content creator from looking at the success that anyone else has had and saying, “oh, well, I should do that. I should apply this technique or that technique.” When you watch people on TikTok or any platform espousing the way to success or the way to make money in real estate or whatever it is, you know from your intuition that they’re full of it because there are so many different ways to be successful.

I hate all those people who try to tell you that there’s only one way to succeed in this world.

When Grant Cardone is screaming at you that you should never own your own home because he doesn’t, and he’s flying around in a private jet, does that mean that’s what you should do? No, of course not. He’s crazy. He’s selling courses. I hate that guy and anyone like him. I hate all those people who try to tell you that there’s only one way to succeed in this world: making passive income through real estate. Come on.

Now, that is the only way to make money.

You might be right. What am I doing? I need lots of apartments. I got this pile of cash. I got to figure out how to get rid of it. Every day I wake up, my girl brings me my sheet, and it says, “how much cash do I have on here? We got to get rid of that cat. That guy is the future.”

The future is STR, short-term rentals.

You see something like that, and you’re like, “are we sure?” What’s his name? I’m so bad at names. Is it Daniel Peña or something? He’s this old guy. I think he’s got a white goatee. He has these classes, and he’s just screaming at everyone in the class. He’s making fun of them. He’s emasculating every man in the room and saying the only way to succeed is his way, which is just screaming at everyone, being so aggressive and a jerk.

You should do an online parody course about how to win on YouTube. Make it like one of those scammy, make-money-fast things.

Or a masterclass on something extremely specific that nobody really needs. Anyway, the point of the rant on all of that is that those folks get very specific. They happen to have success and think that the way they did it and had success is the only way to do it.

There are some best practices for making content for YouTube or TikTok. TikTok and YouTube laid out on their website what those suggestions are, but they’re very broad. You must start making content and experimenting and see what works for you. It’s so cheesy, but you must make the content you enjoy. That’s it.

If you’re making stuff because you think it’ll work or you think it’ll get views, but you’re not really doing it because you want to, it’s never going to work out. I’ve put out 1500 long-form videos on YouTube and hundreds and hundreds of Shorts at this point. I am still trying to figure out what works. 

How many movies does Hollywood put out? They don’t even know what works. They’ll tell you sequels work, but how often does that fail?

Have you seen the Top Gun sequel? That was amazing.

I did.

Did you like it?

I did like it. I have thoughts. That’s going to get $1.5 billion. 

Tough critic.

No, I’m not a tough critic.

It’s 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I know. I thought it was good. It was probably the same movie as the first one.

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A little formulated.

I’m just nostalgic for the original. There were a couple of things where you’re like, “the unnamed country that’s the enemy there so that this movie can be played in China.” We’re not going to say it’s the Chinese. Box office considerations. This is a jingoistic movie pumping up the United States Air Force, but we’re not going to say who our enemy is so that this movie, we can be assured that it won’t get shut down playing in China, Russia, or any of these other places. Little things like that.

Yeah, we want to have done the content creator and to consumers that didn’t even occur to them. They’re just chomping down the popcorn.

Dude, Tom Cruise is a bad man. Is he almost 60 years old? The dude looks young. I don’t know. Maybe it was all special effects, but that guy can pull off from a stunted perspective and everything. Did you hear? I saw something like he was going into space. Did you read that article?

No, I didn’t.

He’s going to be the first civilian to do a spacewalk for a movie for an upcoming Mission Impossible movie.

Really? What?

Yeah. They’re going to take him up to space. Maybe it’s not for Mission Impossible. The gist of the movie was there’s some calamity that’s going to befall earth, and he’s the only person on earth that can save it, but to do it, he’s got to be sent to outer space. So they’re really going to send him to space.

Isn’t that the plotline of every other movie he’s in?

Yeah, but I’m serious. Hold on. I got to google. The Smithsonian Magazine has an article, so you know it’s probably true.

It says, “Universal Studios is willing to send Cruise into space for a proposed action film, but plans aren’t official yet.” He can have the highest-grossing movie of the year. He can have that, but he’s just a bad man.

In what way?

He’s just awesome.

Bad is good. Okay, I got it.

Yeah. As a movie star, he’s in certain ways unparalleled. He’s doing all those stunts, basically, himself, and he’s almost 60 years old.

Yeah, that’s pretty wild.

He’s going to walk in space.

Let’s do a little lightning round here for a minute and a half, and then we’ll close out the episode. Average session number of watching Shorts on YouTube is?

YouTube says it’s 200. Do you believe that?

Two hundred Shorts in an average session of a watch. Crazy.

A kid might do that 5 or 10 times a day. Thirty billion views a day. That’s just on Shorts. On YouTube Shorts, people watch 30 billion views a day. So there’s a real supply problem, or there’s going to be a real supply problem because the demand is up here. Even if every creator made 10 Shorts a day, 3 billion creators need to supply stuff daily for you to see new stuff. Think about that.

This is not a lightning round. We’re going too slow here.

Don't look at the success of others. Know in your intuition that there are different ways to be successful. Share on X

I’m sorry. I know.

Product placements. Have you ever done that where you paid a YouTube creator to have your product in videos?

No.

Do you ever plan to?

No.

Have you ever collaborated with another ecommerce company to do something curiously awesome?

Yes, I have. Are they an ecommerce or are they a manufacturer? Crazy Aaron, he makes Putty. He’s in Target; I don’t know if he’s in ecommerce. He has his ecommerce store. We’ve collaborated a bunch of times on content.

Cool. All right, last question. Is AI going to eat the world?

Yes.

No, the aliens are going to save us first.

No, but we’re going to love being digested and pooped out. We’re going to love the journey. It’s going to be great.

I, for one, love Robot Overlords.

Ditto, if you’re watching robots. I don’t know anything about AI. I’m an idiot that makes YouTube videos. No one should listen to me.

Everyone is using AI to make YouTube videos. Trick question.

Dude, if it worked, I’d sign up.

I know we’re out of time. So if folks want to buy some curiously awesome stuff like crazy toys, candies, and things like those 500-pound gummy bears or whatever bigger sizes you have these days, where do they go?

They go to vat19.com. That’s where you go. 

Jamie, this was a blast. You’re curiously awesome. Thanks for coming back.

I apologize if I ruined part of your podcast here by not following directions.

No, it all unfolded perfectly. 

Thank you, listener. We’ll catch you in the next episode. This is your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Prepare a detailed plan for my video marketing strategy. Brainstorm ideas to help in streamlining the production process. Instead of scurrying for new content for every video, it’s beneficial to have a vault of projects I can easily refer to when necessary.

Find out what content and products are popular with my target demographic. Observe where the crowd usually hangs out and advantageously tailor this for my strategy. Finding the right crowd is how I get the right response.

Implement sustainable strategies that secure the longevity of the business. Don’t jump into the next marketing trend or craze right away. Research thoroughly to ensure a popular product isn’t just a short-term fad.

Get creative in my communication with my target audience. Light humor tends to catch more attention and engagement. Go the extra mile by tailoring content that constantly reflects my brand. 

Focus on producing more visual-type media in the form of videos and animation. Studies show videos in 2022 are the most consumed type of content online, and video marketing isn’t going anywhere. 

Learn about the technical requirements to create an outstanding video. Invest in a good camera and microphone for high-quality audio and video. Or, delegate these tasks to experts such as video producers, editors, sound engineers, etc.

Repurpose existing content and old videos. Not only does repurposing help me save time and resources for brainstorming, it’s good to provide a plethora of content about the same topic for SEO purposes too. Win-win.

Prioritize measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals. Though big and audacious goals sound thrilling, consistency is still key to success. Make sure my objectives are aligned with my available time and resources. 

Develop a structure for creating and uploading my videos. Research optimal upload times and best practices most suitable for my business. Create a schedule and make sure everyone working on my content follows proper guidelines.

Visit Jamie Salvatori’s Vat19’s website to discover and acquire unique gifts, toys, candy, and curiously awesome oddities. Also, check out Vat19’s YouTube channel and watch some of their viral videos. 

About Jamie Salvatori

Jamie Salvatori is the founder of Vat19.com, an e-commerce store featuring unique gifts, toys, candy, and curiously awesome oddities. Vat19 is also well-known for its YouTube channel which currently boasts 3.5 million subscribers and nearly 3 billion video views.